SAP Business One License Policy

SAP Business One licenses are based on a named user licensing model. Each user name needs to have a license granted to it. A named user is an employee who is authorized to access directly or indirectly the licensed SAP Business One software, which is enforced by License Policy Technical Enforcement features in version 9.0.

Employees may not share a single user name to logon to SAP Business One. Licenses assigned to a named user are not specific to a single company database.

In prior releases of SAP Business One up to version 8.82 using the same user name, a named user can log on to SAP Business One twice, for example to access a second company. In reality however, this is not the case. Up to the 8.82 SAP Business One version level, even with a clear emphasis of a named user licensing model (one named user utilizing/assigned one SAP Business One license) the system allows 2 possible login to the same database company using the same user name and password. This then allows customers to have a work around of having two employees using the same login and password to process things within an SAP Business One database company. The drawback in this case is that instead of one license needed for the two employees it now only requires each user to have their own login and password.

Now with the release of SAP Business One version 9.0, inquiries started to pour in as more customers from the SAP Business One 8.8 versions started upgrading to the latest release of SAP Business One. The scenario where the same name user and password logging in as two separate instances to the same database does not work anymore. This has led to many customers asking the questions “Why I have been allowed to do this in SAP Business One 8.82 version and earlier why not now?”.

This is not a conditional change at all on the SAP side. Take note that SAP has been emphasizing the name user licensing model since SAP Business One was introduced to the market. SAP has clearly noted in License Guide documentation that SAP is allowed at all times without prior notice to enforce and restrict the new user types in all software releases according to the contracted functionality. No rights are derived because SAP has issued user types in a license key that have more functionality than those user types contracted by the user. SAP is entitled to implement the new user types in the SAP Business One software at any time without prior notice, such that the delivered license keys fulfill the contacted licenses. Hence, this latest moved in the named user licensing model within SAP Business One 9.0 is not changing existing conditions but simply a technical enforcement of what is already noted and stated right at the beginning.